Pontiac Mayor Leon Jukowski talks about his accomplishments in his four years as mayor, pictured Wednesday December 18, 2013. (Vaughn Gurganian-The Oakland Press)

When Leon Jukowski was sworn in as Pontiac’s mayor, the city had an emergency financial manager, was millions of dollars in the red and police staffing was at critically low levels.

“I was prepared for a lot of a lot of pain,” he said.

Four years later, the city has a balanced budget, a different form of state oversight and more deputies on the street by way of a contract with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, which Jukowski said is the development he’s proudest of during his time at City Hall.

“I think the city’s better off. It may take a couple years for people to recognize that,” he said.

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“I have no regrets.”

Highs, lows in four years at City Hall

Jukowski, 56, won the mayor’s seat in November 2009 in a race against former Downtown Development Authority Director Sandy Michael McDonald. Jukowski, who worked as a city attorney, made several unsuccessful runs for mayor and served as deputy mayor for a little more than two years in former Mayor Willie Payne’s administration. When Jukowski took office in January 2010, the city’s first emergency financial manager, Fred Leeb, had already been in control of Pontiac’s finances for just under a year.

“I think the city four years ago had sort of reached a crisis point,” he said. “I think there were going to be really radical changes regardless of who became mayor.”

During his time as mayor, Jukowski has sat through countless heated City Council meetings, with much criticism directed at his working with former Emergency Manager Lou Schimmel and the restoration of Jukowski’s salary.

“I have to work everyday, and it was tough,” he said of the period after his salary was eliminated by Stampfler in March 2011. “I was here for better than 40 hours (per week) and not getting paid for it.”

Jukowski said political rhetoric doesn’t bother him, but the low point during his term was watching verbal attacks launched against his staff, particularly Community Liaison Sam Scott and Deputy Mayor Ken Glass.

“I’m an old trial lawyer. I don’t really pay very much attention to what people think of me personally,” he said, recalling when he was a young attorney and had just won a divorce case. A woman approached Jukowski in the courthouse hallway afterward, calling him a “scumbag lawyer” and worse.

“The other lawyers came over and said, ‘You must have done a good job.’”

Jukowski, who is white, said it was difficult to watch speakers at City Council meetings direct racially-charged remarks at Scott and Glass, who are black.

“I wouldn’t have condoned had it been going the other way. If some old white guy had come down and called the council a bunch of racial epithets, I would have stood up and said something — ‘look, that’s not acceptable,’” Jukowski said.

“To watch City Council and the so-called political leadership in the city sit silently by and condone that with silence — that was a low point,” he said.

Jukowski sparred with the city’s first two emergency financial managers, Leeb and Michael Stampfler, but worked closely with Schimmel, who now serves as vice chairman of the Pontiac Receivership Transition Advisory Board appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder. Schimmel left behind a balanced two-year, $30-million-a-year budget.

“I believe to this day that if Jennifer Granholm had appointed Lou Schimmel instead of Fred Leeb, we’d be on our own today,” Jukowski said. “We wouldn’t be in the situation we have today, he said, referring to continuing oversight of the city in the form of the transition board and City Administrator Joseph Sobota.

Leeb was “in over his head,” Jukowski said, adding that he urged the former emergency financial manager to put a reserve price on the auction that saw the Silverdome sold for $583,000.

Stampfler “ordered people not to speak with me,” Jukowski said. During Stampfler’s time in Pontiac, though, came what Jukowski describes as the best moment during his term in office: The takeover of the city’s police protection by the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.

The contract, signed in 2011, came after rounds of layoffs had drastically shrunk the number of Pontiac police on the street. Response times are down from more than an hour to less than 10 minutes.

“During a time when Pontiac was in receivership, we tripled the number of police officers on the street, and that’s a miracle,” Jukowski said of the contract signed with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office in 2011. “Nobody thought we could do that.”

Jukowski said another high point has been the revitalization of downtown Pontiac and loft projects that received federal dollars.

“I fought hard to make sure the (second round of Neighborhood Stabilization Program) money was spent the way that it was.”

The city’s third emergency manager, Lou Schimmel, resigned from the position in August.

After Stampfler left, “(former Michigan Treasurer) Andy Dillon called and said, essentially, ‘you’ve run two of these guys out of town. Do you have a working relationship with Lou Schimmel?’” Jukowski said.

“Compared with the other two, I would say Lou Schimmel was far more open,” the mayor said.

“Lou Schimmel didn’t have a big ego. Lou Schimmel came in and said, ‘look, I’m sort of charged with doing a lot of things I know a lot of people aren’t going to like. If you have a better way, sit down with me and tell me.’”

What’s in a name?

Jukowski, who holds a juris doctorate from American University, is the son of Leon and Christine Yulkowski. He grew up on Bassett Street, on Pontiac’s southwest side. Jukowski has two children from a previous marriage and is married to Kristen.

The different spelling of the Polish last name came after Jukowski worked in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s as a liaison officer for a German construction company.

After a radical group attacked an oil company, the American embassy issued an order for Americans to leave the country, Jukowski said. He stayed, but stopped carrying any documents identifying him as an American and changed his last name: “I got rid of the Ellis Island spelling.”

After returning from Saudi Arabia, “I just stuck with it when I came back to the United States.”

Looking ahead

Deirdre Waterman, the winner of the November election, will take office on New Year’s Day.

“The smart money said, given four years of emergency manager rhetoric that went on, it would have been impossible for me to get re-elected,” Jukowski said.

“I’m perfectly happy with the outcome of the election,” he said. “I’m proud of what I’ve done.”

Jukowski said he’d like to see more public discussion among members of the next City Council.

“A council is supposed to argue in public. That’s the function of it — it’s a deliberative body,” he said, adding that “unity” among all members on many issues “indicates they’ve made a discussion or decision outside of the public view, which is a violation of the Open Meetings Act.”

Where the council needs to be unified, Jukowski said, “is to say, ‘we’re not going to tolerate name-calling (and) we’re not going to allow you to turn this meeting into a circus.”

Jukowski’s message to Waterman is simple.

“I am hopeful that my successor is going to embrace the change, the growth, the progress,” he said. “If she does, the city is poised to take off.”

The outgoing mayor said he’d ideally like to return to practicing law at a mid-sized firm.

“I’m a Pontiac person and I’ll be here whether I have a business and whether I’m in city politics or not,” he said.